| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: taciturn, and when they talk it is only about Spain, Vienna, Italy, or
Petersburg. Names of countries act like springs in their mind; press
them, and the ringing of their changes begins.
"That Madame Firmiani sees a great deal of the faubourg Saint-Germain,
doesn't she?" This from a person who desires to belong to the class
Distinguished. She gives the "de" to everybody,--to Monsieur Dupin
senior, to Monsieur Lafayette; she flings it right and left and
humiliates many. This woman spends her life in striving to know and do
"the right thing"; but, for her sins, she lives in a the Marais, and
her husband is a lawyer,--a lawyer before the Royal courts, however.
"Madame Firmiani, monsieur? I do not know her." This man belongs to
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass: Pending the time of our contemplated departure out of our Egypt,
we met often by night, and on every Sunday. At these meetings we
talked the matter over; told our hopes and fears, and the
difficulties discovered or imagined; and, like men of sense, we
counted the cost of the enterprise to which we were committing
ourselves.
These meetings must have resembled, on a small scale, the
meetings of revolutionary conspirators, in their primary
condition. We were plotting against our (so called) lawful
rulers; with this difference that we sought our own good, and not
the harm of our enemies. We did not seek to overthrow them, but
My Bondage and My Freedom |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Of The Nature of Things by Lucretius: Being up-built of figures so unlike,
Are mutually at strife- lest thou suppose
That the shrill rasping of a squeaking saw
Consists of elements as smooth as song
Which, waked by nimble fingers, on the strings
The sweet musicians fashion; or suppose
That same-shaped atoms through men's nostrils pierce
When foul cadavers burn, as when the stage
Is with Cilician saffron sprinkled fresh,
And the altar near exhales Panchaean scent;
Or hold as of like seed the goodly hues
Of The Nature of Things |
The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from To-morrow by Joseph Conrad: walls with his shoulder. He mistrusted the queer-
ness of the people; yet, by then, even the town
children had left off calling after him, and the
tradesmen served him without a word. The slight-
est allusion to his clothing had the power to puzzle
and frighten especially, as if it were something
utterly unwarranted and incomprehensible.
In the autumn, the driving rain drummed on his
sailcloth suit saturated almost to the stiffness of
sheet-iron, with its surface flowing with water.
When the weather was too bad, he retreated under
To-morrow |
